The Bra Street Rambler

Not a writer? Scroll down for your challenge! Ten Weeks of Writers Prep Week Seven: Side-Kicks! Side-kicks are also a fantastic tool for giving a character access to strengths they don’t personally have. Harry Potter wasn’t the most intelligent character you’ll ever read about, but J.K.Rowling gave him access to Hermione’s incredible intelligence, he didn’t know the power of love and acceptance, of familial loyalty, but he was given access to Ron’s friendship and was welcomed to the Weasley family with open arms. In the Fifth Element movie, characters like Leeloo and Corbin Dallas relied on each other for strength, fighting ability, and access to knowledge and understanding. Neither character could have accomplished saving the universe without the other. In Firefly, each character contributed their own strengths; leadership, loyalty, compassion, kindness, intelligence, virtue, etiquette, etc. Everyone needs someone, even if they don’t know it. Who does your protagonist...

Not a writer? Scroll down for your challenge! Ten Weeks of Writers Prep Week Six: Memories! Last week, we focused on the importance of conflict for giving characters more depth, for making them more real and relatable. However, present tense isn’t the only way to give characters a chance to show their true colours. You can also utilize a past tense, or even an altered tense, both of which can prove just as useful in this sense. Memories, dreams, and strong emotional states (i.e. unexplained anxiety or outrage,) are also a fantastic way to allow readers more insight into your characters. While present conflicts allows us to watch a character develop and change, past conflicts allow us to understand why they are the way they are in the now. Why are they so cold to people, why do they push people away, why are they afraid, why are they so determined, why do they use humour as a self-defense mechanism, why did they give up on love, why did they switch to the dark s...

Not a writer? Scroll down for your challenge! Ten Weeks of Writers Prep Week Five: Conflicts! This week, you get to add a little more substance to your plot. What are five conflicts you can add to your plot line for your primary character prior to the climax? Are there any you can think of for your antagonist? Remember, a story needs more than just one thing to go wrong. It’s the subtle conflicts that often contribute the most to the development of your characters. It shows us who they are, what their strengths are, and of course let us not forget, it allows us to see that they are not perfect. Conflicts make characters more relatable and allow a reader to empathize. It is by demonstrating the depth of your characters that you will have readers enthralled with them. Everyone loves an underdog, and a true masterpiece evokes emotion, so don’t go easy on them. Again, it is important to remember that your antagonist is a character too, not a lamp. They need the same ...

Not a writer? Scroll down for your challenge! Ten Weeks of Writers Prep Week Four: Plot Points! This week, figure out the basics of your story. It’s all fine and dandy to have characters in mind but it definitely helps to know what is going to happen to them. How does their adventure begin? What happens during the escalation? In which way does their world change? What is the biggest conflict your character will face? How are the conflicts resolved? How does your story end? These are all things that you will need to know while facing the pressure filled deadline of NaNoWriMo. Feel free to keep things simple this week bearing in mind that you can come back as much as you like and fill in the gaps between plot checkpoints. Personally, I have found it useful to start with my five checkpoints, later coming back to add any other conflicts, flashbacks, memories, conversations, discoveries, etc,. However, it really is dependent on what works best...